


So Have I For You

by freneticfloetry



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discipline only carries you so far, lies are never good enough to truly fool yourself, and pride goeth before a fall. She's never been trained for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Have I For You

He storms from the shuttle, anger hardening his features even as pride holds his head high, and her eyes follow where she cannot.

The air swirls around her before closing in, turbulent even in his absence – charged, electric particles that have lost their conductor. There has always been an energy about him, humming on a frequency separate from the fierce current of his intensity - the quiet of an observer among all his bluster, an aura between him and the universe that bordered on awe.

She's never met a man quite like him. And never will again, she knows. There isn't another in creation so determined to prove that he has nothing to prove. To face off with faith at fifty paces, snuff its life away with aim too true, only to lay it to rest deep within himself – buried deep beneath his skin, where it takes root in his blood and branches into his veins, until Zoe's planted behind his eyes and River blossoms in his bones and Kaylee sprouts from his very fingertips.

Space for them all, blooming from Serenity itself... but she grows on the outside, sown against his will, and cannot flourish as a weed. And he's been clawing at the dirt for as long as she can remember, eroding every inch where she's found any purchase.

The battles have been too many to count. The stealth attacks, the impasses, wars with words that never end in white flags.

Such rails against his authority held a strange thrill for him – she could spot it in the tilt of his head, see it in the square of his shoulders whenever she voiced a complaint or laced his self-appointed title with disdain. In all her training, after all, she had never been a soldier, a fact he reveled in pointing out whenever possible. She hasn't seen the things he's survived, hadn't been there when the shadows crept into his eyes to live and breathe and rage against her light. But perhaps their downfall lies in the trenches of her own past – built of flawless facades, hollowed from other men's beds. The best are unflinching, unwavering, unfeeling… and she is the best. Yet here she is, fumbling, faltering. Feeling far too much. And in all her training, she had never been taught how to stop.

Regardless of reasoning, they could not continue this way. Lying came as easily as breathing… but she's lied to herself for far too long.

His tongue is a sharp edge that cuts at her psyche like a razor, and her hands are too smooth to hold on without him slipping away. There will be no victor here, only unceasing bloodshed and wounds too raw to heal. And all the while, the chasm between them will grow, widen, splinter deeper, echoing with his denial and her desperation.

He cannot bow, and she cannot stoop, and there will never be ground level enough to bring them eye-to-eye.

So she's packing again – pushing through his presence in the air and his voice in her ears and the lingering urge to stop – gathering all that is hers, leaving nothing behind. Not this time.

And she's saying goodbye, silently – to the shuttle that was never fully hers, to the ship she loves, to the man who might have been both – leaving no opportunity for objection, for words to the contrary, for a plea that will never come.

This time, she cries.


End file.
